Orders to Kill

by Amy Knight

  Kadyrov is not only the political leader of Chechnya, but also the religious leader, the “amir,” of the republic, who deems it his duty to interfere in all spiritual matters of its citizens. In his television appearances, for example, he often issues instructions on how his subjects are to dress: “I tell you that a woman who goes out in black clothes, with a covered chin … her husband should know that we will take this woman away and look her over … we will force her to take off her clothes and trousers.” (Such dress, in Kadyrov’s view, is a sign of extremism and does not conform with Sharia law.) His security forces and clerics carry out raids on buses and cars, detaining young men whose appearances do not conform to Kadyrov’s take on the dictates of Islam. Their relatives are not informed of their whereabouts, even as they are held captive for several days for “guided discussions.”11

  Among the most chilling accounts of the situation in Chechnya is a report issued by Human Rights Watch in August 2016.12 This in-depth study, written by Tanya Lokshina, describes a new, comprehensive crackdown on residents of Chechnya who have manifested dissatisfaction with the Chechen leadership, as well as on human-rights defenders, journalists, and lawyers. Based on forty-three interviews, the report documents case upon case of abduction, torture, public humiliation, and murder by Kadyrov forces. On three occasions since 2014, the offices of the Joint Mobile Group of Human Rights Defenders in Chechnya (JMG), the sole such organization to remain in the republic, were ransacked or burned. The group was forced to withdraw from Chechnya in 2016. In March 2016, a group of Russian and foreign journalists traveling in a mini-van from Ingushetia to Chechnya was attacked by masked men, dragged out of the van, and beaten severely. The attackers then set the van on fire. Putin’s press office condemned the attack and promised to investigate, but nothing came of it.

  More recently, in March 2017, Kadyrov’s forces began a targeted campaign against gay men in Chechnya, where homosexuality is condemned. According to Novaia gazeta, “the command was given for a ‘prophylactic sweep’ and it went as far as real murders.” Tanya Lokshina noted that gay men who had been abducted “returned to their families barely alive from beatings.”13 The official line in Chechnya is that gays don’t exist there, so there is no persecution. During a televised appearance with Putin in mid-April 2017, Kadyrov called the reports about a campaign against gays “libelous.” The Kremlin has backed him up. Kremlin spokesman Dmitrii Peskov told journalists that there was no evidence of arrests of gays in Chechnya. This should come as no surprise, given the Kremlin’s own openly anti-gay policies and Putin’s apparent personal hostility toward gays.14

  Meanwhile, Kadyrov has long assured Putin that his forces are prepared to carry out Putin’s orders anywhere, at any time. In late December 2014, he called thousands of Chechen Interior Ministry troops to a sports stadium in Grozny, making a pledge that they would be at the command of the Russian president: “We are ready to pick any point in the world and to move to where our president will tell us.… We will fulfill his orders 100 percent.”15

  As one analyst pointed out, Boris Nemtsov, in a “chillingly prescient” post on Facebook, speculated on the meaning of this massive rally: “I can’t understand what Putin is expecting when 20,000 of Kadyrov’s fighters gather in a stadium in Grozny. Kadyrov said his fighters are ready to defend the regime and execute any order from the Kremlin. I believe this. So where will Kadyrov’s 20,000 fighters go? What will be required of them? How should we behave? When will they arrive in Moscow?” Nemtsov would be gunned down in just two months.16

  The Money Factor

  The Kremlin regularly funnels vast sums of money into Chechnya, where unemployment is close to 20 percent, but most of it goes into Kadyrov’s coffers. According to one estimate, Moscow allocates around fifty-nine billion rubles (around one billion dollars) annually to Chechnya in grants and subsidies.17 The much-vaunted “Grozny City,” established by the Kadyrov government, features five skyscrapers, but four of them remain empty. The rest of Grozny is in a sorry state. According to the Open Russia film about Kadyrov:

  The myth of the restoration of Chechnya is exactly that—a myth. The public face of a restored Grozny, endlessly shown by federal channels, is in fact only one street in Grozny, Putin Avenue. The rest of Chechnya still lies in ruins—there are traces of shells and bullets on the walls of buildings. After a few days in Chechnya, we can confidently say that billions of federal aid money has been spent on a Potemkin village, and on Ramzan Kadyrov’s Arab sheikh lifestyle. Ordinary residents have seen nothing of this aid.18

  In addition to federal funds, Kadyrov has another source of income—the Akhmat Kadyrov Foundation, named after Ramzan’s father. Chechens are required to pay monthly fees to the foundation, based on their earnings. According to Open Russia experts, the fees yield about three to four billion rubles a month, a truly staggering amount to take from ordinary Chechens.19 The alleged purpose of the foundation is to carry out social projects and provide assistance to citizens who cannot make ends meet. But in fact most of it goes to Kadyrov himself, who lives a lavish lifestyle befitting a king. He has a fleet of sports cars, including a Lamborghini and a Ferrari, estimated to be worth over three million dollars. He lives in a 260,000-square-meter palace in his native village, Tsentaroi. According to one journalist: “In 2004, he [Kadyrov] had a house in Tsentaroi. Then it became a palace. And in 2014 this had become a building of incredible size with private quarters for Putin.”20

  Kadyrov’s residence even has its own private zoo, with pumas, tigers, and panthers. And Kadyrov owns more than a hundred race horses. In the words of Ilya Yashin: “It is worth mentioning that the discrepancy between official income and actual living standards is a typical phenomenon for Russian officials. Kadyrov’s example, however, cannot be compared to that of any [other] governor or minister. No other representative of the Russian authorities allows himself to make such an ostentatious display of his luxurious lifestyle and to throw money around in public.”21

  Kadyrov has a penchant for adulation. He paid a reported two million dollars to Mike Tyson for his attendance at a boxing tournament in Gudermes (eighteen miles east of Grozny) in September 2005. And for his thirty-fifth birthday in October 2011, Kadyrov paid American actress Hilary Swank an undisclosed sum to be among those celebrating at an elaborate ceremony in his honor. This prompted Akhmed Zakaev to send Swank a letter, pointing out that “Russia unleashed two terrible wars on the Chechen soil that resulted in the deaths of 250,000 people, including 40,000 children. The Russian regime of terror continues to reign in Chechnya under Kadyrov’s leadership.”22

  Kadyrov’s Personality Cult

  In April 2016, during the nationwide television program “Direct Line to Vladimir Putin,” a video message appeared from a Chechen villager in which he complained that local officials were pocketing money from federal funds designated to restore housing destroyed during the war and to pay teachers. In short order, the villager, Ramzan Dzhalaidinov, received threats against his life and was forced to flee to Dagestan. A few weeks later, armed security officers broke into his home in Chechnya, abducted his wife and children, and set the premises on fire. Shortly thereafter, Dzhalaidinov appeared on Grozny television and said: “I am very ashamed of myself, and I apologize to Ramzan Kadyrov for the unfounded accusations.” He also thanked Kadyrov for the reconstruction of houses in his district, which he claimed had been completely rebuilt.23

  As Tanya Lokshina has pointed out:

  Public humiliation forms part of Kadyrov’s latest strategy to eradicate dissent in the republic. For close to a decade, the young leader has been exercising tyrannical rule over Chechnya. A free press no longer exists, and the few journalists from independent Russian and foreign outlets reporting on ongoing abuses inside the republic find themselves at great risk of harassment, arbitrary detentions, and even violent attacks by security officials and their proxies. But the worst punishment is reserved for Chechens themselves. Those who dare to post critical comments online a
re increasingly being tracked down and penalized.24

  It is difficult to judge Kadyrov’s popular support, because he has forbidden any political opposition. In his words: “We have no opposition, which serves only to undermine [state] authority. I will not allow [political opponents] to play with the people.”25 Because there are no alternatives, close to 100 percent of the votes go to the pro-Kremlin United Russia Party in elections at all levels. Kadyrov has built up an extensive personality cult, which he fosters through the state-controlled Grozny television and radio, the main sources of news for Chechens. He also uses social media as a tool for political control, firing off a constant stream of messages on Instagram, either bragging about himself or threatening his perceived enemies. In addition, Kadyrov maintains accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and VKontakte. His total number of followers on these different accounts was estimated by the Chechen Ministry for Press and Information in 2015 to be over two million.26

  In the autumn of 2016, Kadyrov began starring in a reality TV show called The Team, which is similar to Donald Trump’s Apprentice. As The New York Times observed: “Mr. Kadyrov … is clearly getting a hug from the Kremlin, with state-run television running what amounts to a weekly infomercial.… The show appears aimed at persuading more investors and Russian tourists to open their wallets in Chechnya so that Moscow will not have to.… The show may also be an attempt to groom Mr. Kadyrov for a national [i.e., Russian] role.”27

  Threats to Russia’s Opposition

  In January 2016, the leader of Chechen’s parliament, Magomed Daudov, posted on Instagram a photograph of Kadyrov straining to hold a leash on his fierce-looking German shepherd, named Tarzan. The accompanying message said that the dog was “itching to sink its teeth” into certain prominent Russian opposition figures, and gave them nicknames that matched breeds of dogs.28 Just days later, Kadyrov himself posted a video on Instagram. It showed two leaders of the opposition party Parnas, Mikhail Kasyanov and Vladimir Kara-Murza, in a sniper’s crosshairs, stating “whoever doesn’t get it will get it.” (The video had over 16,000 “likes.”) Aleksei Navalny had this reaction: “There is no longer any doubt that all such statements in recent weeks and specifically this one were approved by Putin and the Kremlin, and quite probably were inspired by them too.”29

  Responding to the uproar over the Kadyrov video, Putin’s press secretary, Dmitrii Peskov, said that the Kremlin did not follow Instagram but that “we will watch this video and see what it is all about.”30 But in the meantime, on January 18, 2016, Kadyrov had come forth with a piece in the Russian government-sponsored newspaper Izvestiia, just days before the first anniversary of Nemtsov’s murder.31 His writing was reminiscent of the jargon of the Stalin era. The headline was “Jackals Will Be Punished According to the Law of the Russian Federation.” It was a scathing denunciation of those who spoke out against Putin.

  Kadyrov threatened oppositionists who had “sold their souls to the Western devil.” He went on: “The non-systemic opposition and its supporters can be considered a mass psychosis. I can help them with their clinical problem. I promise that I will not spare injections [in a psychiatric hospital]. We will give them double the prescribed dose.” (This presumably was a reference to the way the Kremlin had dealt with dissidents in the Soviet era.) But what was most significant about the ravings of Kadyrov was what he said in the end: “If these dogs have defenders in their own country, well, the Russian people have their own defender, the president of our country, Vladimir Putin, and I am ready to fulfill his orders, no matter how complex.” A thinly veiled statement that Kadyrov would continue to use Chechen thugs to murder dissidents on Putin’s behalf.

  American journalist Anna Nemtsova (no relation to Boris Nemtsov), who has interviewed Kadyrov several times, wrote that “the Chechen leader, once a Putin favorite, is embarrassing the Kremlin by threatening everyone.”32 But it is more likely that Kadyrov is serving the Kremlin’s purposes by intimidating Russian oppositionists and journalists on its behalf. As one observer noted, “In many ways, Kadyrov is the Putin regime’s collective id. He manifests its basic instinct. Its intrinsic aggression. Its deepest, darkest desires.”33

  Kadyrov has been outspoken about other matters, saying what the Kremlin would like to say but cannot. He initially distanced himself from the Tsarnaev brothers, insisting that they never lived in Chechnya and that nobody in the republic knew them. He noted that “Tamerlan and Dzhokhar are the worst ‘shaitans’ [devils]. That is why I do not defend them and have no intention of saying a word of support for them.”34 But after the guilty verdict against Dzhokhar was announced on May 15, 2015, Kadyrov denounced his death sentence. He wrote on Instagram:

  No one was surprised by this news. The American security services, which were suspected of involvement in the Boston tragedy, needed a victim. They offered up Tsarnaev as a victim.… Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed under strange circumstances. Ibragim Todashev [the friend of Tamerlan] was shot dead at the time he was being questioned. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev alone ended up behind bars. I do not believe that the Tsarnaevs carried out this terrorist attack—if they did carry it out—without the U.S. security services’ knowledge.35

  Kadyrov had also praised the prime suspect in the Nemtsov murder, Zaur Dadaev, as “a real soldier and patriot” on Instagram shortly after Nemtsov was killed.36

  Kadyrov’s Future

  In a lengthy October 2016 report for Novaia gazeta, Elena Milashina, who has spent a lot of time in Chechnya despite the tremendous danger there for journalists, speculated that the ten-year “contract” between Kadyrov and Putin has expired. Milashina observed that, with terrorism now at an all-time low in the republic, the Kremlin is rethinking its unconditional support for Kadyrov, whose dictatorial methods threaten to destabilize the situation and inflame discontent elsewhere in the North Caucasus. In the words of Milashina:

  The need for revising the old contract, which has exhausted itself (the terrorist underground has been practically destroyed, and the towns and villages of Chechnya, still terribly poor, have been rebuilt), has begun to be recognized in Moscow. But the signals that the Kremlin was sending, after many years of ‘hurrah, Kadyrov,’ are mixed. On the one hand, Putin repeatedly pulls Ramzan down. On the other, his criticism is always followed by a ‘consolation prize,’ in the form of high state honors designed to soften the blow to the ego of the ‘faithful foot soldier.’37

  As Milashina noted, this dynamic was illustrated when there was a “crisis of confidence” between Kadyrov and Putin after the Nemtsov murder. This crisis played out for a year after the killing, with Kadyrov announcing in February 2016 that he would not seek re-election for a third term as Chechen president: “My time has passed.” But the announcement was followed by an outpouring of support from thousands of Chechen citizens (doubtless orchestrated by Kadyrov and his circle). In rally after rally, the people said “do not leave us, our dear father.” Responding to the pressure, Putin received Kadyrov in the Kremlin and announced in late March 2016 that he was appointing him acting president (his term had been due to expire on April 5) until the September presidential elections in Chechnya. But Putin added a caveat: “You and all future leaders of the republic must do everything to comply with Russian laws in all spheres of life, and I want to stress, in all spheres of our lives.”38

  Kadyrov was recalcitrant. In May, he suddenly demanded that the president of the Chechen Supreme Court, who was appointed by Moscow, resign. Three other Supreme Court judges were detained by Chechen law-enforcement authorities and forced to sign letters of resignation. Moscow was totally unprepared for Kadyrov’s latest move. But in response, Putin’s press secretary, Dmitrii Peskov, gave a signal of capitulation. The resignations, he claimed, were completely voluntary and not coerced.39

  During the summer of 2016, Kadyrov had visits from several high-ranking Russian officials, including vice-premier Igor Shuvalov, who is responsible for the economic affairs of the Russian government. On August 25, Kadyrov had a late-night meeting i
n the Kremlin with Putin, who renewed his blessing for Kadyrov’s leadership of Chechnya. Kadyrov, for his part, thanked Putin for his “constant attention to the republic and [his] help and support in resolving the most difficult, severe, and relevant issues.” Significantly, during his visit to Moscow, Kadyrov also met with Aleksandr Bastrykin, who has led the investigation of the Nemtsov murder. Kadyrov’s refusal to allow investigators to interrogate Ruslan Geremeev, the presumed organizer of the crime, did not prevent him from earning Bastrykin’s praise for his accomplishments in Chechnya. Indeed, Bastrykin gave Kadyrov two presents—a medal for “vigilance and bravery” and a general’s dagger.40

  Kadyrov was re-elected Chechen president with a resounding 98 percent of the vote on September 18, 2016. And some Russia experts see Kadyrov as presiding over Chechnya for the long haul. In the words of Catherine Fitzpatrick, who follows Kadyrov closely: “Moscow political and military leaders cannot hope to compete with ethnic ties and a leader who remembers the birthdays of all the police chiefs he has put in power. They would have to remove not just Kadyrov, but his extended family and all of his loyal men. And he personally, as well as all his lieutenants, are buff and ready for combat.”41 The New York Times even went so far as to suggest that Kadyrov is being groomed for the Russian presidency: “Mr. Putin has no anointed heir … and some imagine that if a succession proves chaotic, Mr. Kadyrov could swoop in with his 20,000-strong Praetorian Guard and claim to impose order for the good of all Russia.”42